By Lora Ries ~
Tuesday’s Senate hearing with Facebook “whistleblower” Frances Haugen was part of a slick, well-produced rollout of a former Facebook employee, complete with a prerecorded and well-timed “expose” on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” harmonious media cheerleading, and paid Democratic consultants.
With this razzle-dazzle, the witness and her handlers want the audience to use the pretext of child protection to increase government power over Facebook, resulting in increased censorship, which likely will inure to the detriment of conservatives in the long run.
To identify—and avoid—the key takeaway of the hearing, members of Congress and the American public need to see through the glossy performance and focus on Haugen’s former role at Facebook and what she advocated for in the hearing; namely, more censorship of “misinformation.”
On the plus side, Haugen released Facebook documents and described troubling issues at the tech giant that are important for Americans to know and understand.
In its never-ending quest for growth, Facebook preys on younger children to set their eyes on the Instagram and Facebook platforms and to keep them there, despite knowing the dangerous—and even deadly—mental and emotional downstream effects that has on children, particularly girls.
Facebook has called teens creating Instagram accounts without parents’ knowledge a unique value proposition.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.—chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee’s Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security Subcommittee, which held yesterday’s hearing—called the effects of Instagram on teens an “addict’s narrative.”
He added, “The damage to self-interest and self-worth inflicted by Facebook today will haunt a generation.” He’s right.
While members of Congress and Americans can agree that social media companies should not prey on children, what members of Congress propose to address the many forms of abuse that such companies commit would result in drastically different consequences.
Investigating Facebook and other Big Tech companies for misleading consumers and advertisers, and for deceptively misrepresenting their products, is an available course of action for the Federal Trade Commission under current authorities, and the FTC should utilize them.
Blumenthal and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., both spoke at Tuesday’s hearing in favor of investigating and penalizing Facebook for such deception.
Facebook and other Big Tech companies warrant such scrutiny, transparency, and consequences based on any deceptive business practices.
A second overdue change discussed at the hearing was reforming Section 230, which provides internet service providers overbroad liability immunity for removing legal content that they consider “objectionable” from their platforms, and giving them a free pass for altering content posted by others by adding “truth banners” and the like while still claiming—falsely, in our view—that they are not “publishers” of the content on their platforms.
Since the 1996 government-provided protection, companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have accelerated and expanded content removal, labeling, and ranking beyond illegal activity and into content that should be distributed to encourage free speech and debate.
Companies should not be immune from lawsuits against this behavior when they are clearly acting as publishers.
Haugen testified as much when she stated that Facebook builds algorithms based on intentional ranking decisions. She correctly stated that Facebook should be held responsible, and not get a pass, for its ranking decisions and algorithm designs.
But government should not encourage or expand the current favorite tool of the left, companies such as Facebook, and Haugen herself; namely, identifying and removing “misinformation.”
Haugen was the lead product manager for “Civic Misinformation” at Facebook. She explained that Facebook changed its content defaults in the summer of 2020 for health (COVID-19) and civic (election) content because it knew “dangerous” content related to those issues was on the platform.
Haugen complained that after the election, Facebook returned to its prior content default settings to resume platform growth. She testified that Facebook betrayed its commitments to keep elections safe when it dissolved her civic integrity unit after the 2020 election.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., advocated for her legislation to hold digital platforms accountable for health misinformation posted online. Haugen lamented that Facebook does not have the capability to prevent COVID-19 misinformation because it overrelies on artificial intelligence to catch such content, and AI only catches a small fraction of it.
Americans should have visceral reactions against efforts to label and censor “misinformation.” COVID-19 and the 2020 election have shown that such labels are often proven wrong and that “misinformation” is a euphemism for content the left does not like or want shared.
Two prime examples were the Wuhan, China, lab being the source of COVID-19 and the Hunter Biden laptop. News of the latter was likely suppressed by Haugen’s own team.
Haugen testified that Facebook wants to trick Congress into making limited changes and that company representatives use false choices—such as divisive content or losing free speech—to scare off significant reform.
Yet Haugen seeks to perpetuate dangerous censorship of lawful content regarding issues in need of open debate on all platforms.
Americans need to see through this setup of a “whistleblower” hearing and avoid being tricked into weaponizing so-called “misinformation” labeling and censorship.
Haugen testified that free speech-respecting social media are possible. It deserves more than just her lip service.
Lora Ries is director of the Center for Technology Policy and a senior research fellow for homeland security at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/
Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal http://dailysignal.com/
Lawrence Morra
Thu 10/07/2021
Reblogged this on Zero Lift-Off and commented:
“With this razzle-dazzle” By Lora Ries ~PA Pundits International
Great article and really pointing to an underlying systemic and deeply rooted ugly problem in America that of The Art of Deception!
Edgar Allen Poe said “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
“But government should not encourage or expand the current favorite tool of the left, companies such as Facebook, and Haugen herself; namely, identifying and removing “misinformation.”
“Haugen was the lead product manager for “Civic Misinformation” at Facebook. She explained that Facebook changed its content defaults in the summer of 2020 for health (COVID-19) and civic (election) content because it knew “dangerous” content related to those issues was on the platform.”
“Haugen complained that after the election, Facebook returned to its prior content default settings to resume platform growth. She testified that Facebook betrayed its commitments to keep elections safe when it dissolved her civic integrity unit after the 2020 election.”
This is because it’s about Money and Power and these platforms are nothing but money making powerhouses and Propaganda machines! They are an integral part of the globalist NWO construct for a more totalitarian world and not conerne4dabout whether or not they will damage future generations minds or souls! Blumenthal is nothing but a greasy backstabbing partisan paid up crony member of both the establishment and leftist radical agendas so his being involved highhandedly in these committee drives to police these Tech Giants is a huge charade and will never yield what we with any sense would want it to which would be to reduce the amount of control and censorship these giants have over the general public’s consciousness!
Blumenthal is nothing but a slimy gutter rat in the world of politics and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him with one arm let alone two! There isn’t an ounce of integrity if this old crony dirt bag politician so putting him in such a position with a smoke and mirror con-job is like putting the wolf in charge of minding the Hen House. This whole thing all boils down to nothing more than more of the same from the highly partisan and fully corrupted Democrat Establishment Party.
Back in August while writing about the ill-effect of Big Tech, I had this to say! “This can be a huge time waster for younger children too, and they can be absorbed with alternate artificial imagined realities that mess them up totally! I have to say it’s not good! Older adults can be taken advantage of in these places let alone children who have so much to learn. Besides that the Big Tech moguls and operators or governments that use them are not angels or great people that care about you or me, far from it; they are for the most part Greedy overly materialistic drunk with power and influence ruined people, who got so much so fast which is so unnatural and destructive for a human being!”
“Because I believe absolutely that its ill-gotten gain and gain should come from long hard work and dedication to proper principles in the Bible! But these so rich and powerful overnight individuals in this cyber Big Tech Business World makes no sense scenario; corrupts the soul it’s not natural or healthy for any soul, so they are corrupted to the core and prove it all the time with their nefarious undertakings of manipulation or exploitation! So you talk about exploiters dirty old men and such, but, that isn’t even scratching the surface of what problems are inherent in this modern running rampant open communication venues or platforms realm; the whole business is exploitative to the core! Do you think it was set up to help you and me to make the world a better place for all? Are there some angelic beings running this up above that only will allow it to be a wonderful thing; impossible. It’s not a good thing over all! I could go down a list of many things that make it not good, and just one example is that too many people are addicted! Like old timers sitting in front of a slot machine in a casino; do you see how much human capacity and time gets frivolously burned up with this technology? The old adage that comes to my mind is as in film acting, “less is more.”
Now stop and think about how before the damned evil internet took over the public consciousness making a bunch of weirdos out of the populace who now follow the leader Big Tech, all playing the game, it was Television that used to be called the Idiot Box and ruled the public’s Free-time thinking with mostly junk entertainment and outside of that some good reruns of older movies that were being used as a major entertainment outlet for families like the Movie of the Week or The Late Night Movie, Afternoon Matinee venues and those after school special programs for the Kids; while the Movie Theaters kept grinding out the Latest Hollywood Big Hits to come to the Silver Screen!
Now in Television Land Days Children were drawn daily and especially on Saturday Mornings to all the cartoons and geared for children TV Shows with tons of subliminal suggestion going on to entice them to scream for more of those Sweet Sugary Cereals like Captain Crunch or Lucky Charms and all kinds of high sugar content addictive Snack Foods that were all unhealthy and loaded with Mucho Sugar and Artificial Ingredients! All of that was making for a sick and dysfunctional society with Type II Diabetes surging to unheard of levels in modern times suddenly, and Obesity or Behavioral issues cropping up all over the place as in “hyperactive children” being put on Ritalin in the newer younger generations! All of which is not even touching on the psychological manipulator factors of coercion or mind control that was shaping young people to be the consumer captive audience “Big Corporations” were interested in creating for “Market” molding and shaping them into the future for “Giant Profits!”
All of this was going on under everyone’s noses while not many political figures in Washington were interested in curtailing an extremely harmful practice causing extremely dire consequences on children for generations to come because those Huge Lobbyists were always “getting and having their way with the Beltway” just like they do now; and all of our illustrious dirt-bag politicians that were deeply entwined with Big Bucks making practices and as we know Money makes the World Go-round! I hope they will please cut with the snow job already on this chick being a great heroine coming to the rescue; it’s a crock of horse shit! These same old slimy criminal politicians won’t lift a finger to support the Constitution or Freedoms of the Average Citizen any more than the Taliban will give women equal freedoms that men enjoy in Afghanistan ever!
While we are on the topic of these committees and the clowns running them let’s not forget that this Clinton Gutter Rat and totally biased UN-American Professional Politician can’t be doing anything good for us! This guy is one of those creepy backstabbing guys that loves going on Fishing Expeditions trying to do the Shifty Schiff thing and take false accusations and outright Lies and manufacture a weaponized accusation or narrative! If any of you believe anything this crumb does is noteworthy I’ve got a bridge to sell you!
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) slammed President Trump on Saturday for his repeated denials of collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia.
“Trump denial of Russian collusion rotten at core and doomed to unravel,” Blumenthal tweeted Saturday. “Expect more serious convictions and indictments early in 2018 as Special Counsel climbs ladder of criminal culpability – and more panicky, preemptive attacks from Republicans.”
Blumenthal’s remarks come on the heels of a new report detailing how the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election began.
Yea sure I like Sponge Bob Too Blummer Boy!
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/366890-blumenthal-trumps-denial-of-russia-collusion-rotten-at-core
Lawrence Morra III
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mosckerr
Thu 10/07/2021
Why Israel so totally and completely detests and despises Europe.
Europeans have the known excuse of “I am just following orders syndrome”. Nations have national interests. The left\right divide exists as a show to entertain the ignorant masses. Spain employs bull fights to accomplish the same result.
The Shoah did not limit itself to the Germans. The Allies refused to bomb the rail lines leading to the death camps b/c they viewed the senseless murder of Jews as less damaging than that those German soldiers required to slaughter unarmed Jewish men women and children … better that inferior Jews suffer brutal murder than that those German soldiers kill Allied soldiers fighting on the fronts!!
The Soviet army stopped its advance, thus permitting the Nazi scum to obliterate the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Britain passed the White Paper in 1939 which closed “British Palestine” to Jews attempting to flee from Nazi evil.
I listen to the claptrap noise from EU foreign ministers, their demand to negate the Israeli victory in the 1967 2nd Israeli Independence War. Their trash rhetoric of Peace Peace so reminds me of Goebbels propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland.
The European imperialism made by means of treaties signed among political allies whereby thereafter Europeans pretend that those treaties define “International Law”! What a total load of crap! You ask for an example: sure. The Rome agreement which established the International Court of Criminal law. Israel rejects European injustice. For over 2000 years not a single European court of law ever held the Xtian church accountable for war crimes against humanity. Yet this international court established by the Rome agreement which Israel did not join assumes that it has the jurisdiction to try Israel for war crimes? What a total load of shit. Europeans lost their 1st world mandate following two brutal European Civil Wars. Israelis like myself will not permit arrogant European barbarians to ever again play God and judge Jews.
German kingdoms, before they forced Jews into vile ghetto concentration camps for some 300 years, those princes taxed the Jewish minority populations [taxation without representation … the key American objection to British rule over the American colonies] unto absolute poverty, and then gave them the option to flee to Eastern Europe totally destitute or exist in ghetto degradation without any charges or trial!
The BLM noise erupted after that white cop placed his knee upon the neck of a handcuffed and totally immobilized black man, resulting in that man’s death. Police brutality against the black populations, what an utter disgrace!
The war on drugs, compares to the Prohibition which outlawed alcohol, that act of Xtian pius stupidity brought organized crime to American shores. The Mafia plagues the US to this day. The American prison system which thereafter jailed blacks 10xs more often than whites, regardless that blacks only make up 20% or there abouts of the total American population. This crime of injustice finally caught up and blacks, like Jews in Europe, said – Enough is Enough. Fuck You Crackers!
The courts in America – just as fucked up as the courts of Europe. Justice its a product bought and sold with the Roma people at the butt of that shitty system.
Now due to European imperialism, the US, British, French, and German invasion of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, to maintain the US dollar monopoly over what currency Arab countries can sell their oil and gas – called the petro-dollar – its going down as well! Arab countries shall not long permit the continued US imperialism which regulates OPEC trade much like the Federal government in Washington regulates trade between Texas and Oklahoma!
The vile Iraq invasion carried out by that Bush\Cheney warmonger warcriminal, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, following the Neo-Con first Bush destruction of his Army in that failed invasion of Kuwaite, he took Iraq off of the petro-dollar US monopoly, and Bush #2 used the 9\11 false flag attack to justify the US\British invasion of Iraq which resulted in the public hanging of Hussein and Iraq returning to the petro-dollar regulation\subjugation of Arab natural resources!
Ya do not know how the Americans pulled the wool over the Arab towel heads eyes! Just 2 years prior to the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the US dollar existed as a commodity based currency, linked to gold and silver. The US limited the value of gold to $33 dollars an once! FDR pulled this rabbit out of the hat during the Great Depression! During those years America made it illegal for US private citizens to own gold. FDR together with his Central Bank\Federal Reserve [introduced by Wilson in 1913] immediately after the Wall Street collapse of 1929 restricted the supply of US dollars in the US currency by more than 1/3. This action, like as similarly done by Congress immediately following the Civil War, concentrated wealth into the hands of the “robber barons”/Corporate monopolies! FDR did a collectivization program of private property of US farmers that far outstripped the Stalin collectivization of Kulak privitely owned farm lands! [In the 1930s 1/3 of all Ukreainians died of starvation. Hence before the idiot Germans sent in the SS monsters to racially clean up the lands of the Ukraine, the Ukrainians treated the German invaders as saviors and threw flowers upon the German tanks!]
Revisionist historians jabber about the cruelty of the Soviet collectivization program. But just read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and you will see the oppression imposed by the government in Washington, its socialism which took private property away from the individual and gave it to the Corporate monopolies like the Jolly Green Giant. Steinbeck’s books was banned for several decades! Book burnings did not limit themselves to the Nazi pigs.
Returning to the creation of the petro-dollar. In 1971 France had a vast surplus of US international dollars, and demanded from the US treasury either gold or silver! This put Nixon in a pickle! America was broke, bankrupt, economically kaput!
Nixon approached the king of Saudi Arabia with the petro-dollar suggestion. The king told Nixon that he was nuts. Why should OPEC become regulated like the 50 States in the American union? Don’t know who made the suggestion, suspect the Arabian king, but a dastardly deal was struck. OPEC would limit sales of its natural resources, limited to US dollar transactions ie the petro-dollar – in exchange for 2 pre-conditions. (1) Nixon must force the Meir government of Israel not to attack the build up of Egyptian and Syrian armies on the borders of Israel. Thus permitting Arab countries to surprise attack Israel, like Israel surprised attacked Nasser in 1967! (2) The US must not invade Arab countries after OPEC imposed an oil embargo against Western Europe and America in 1973. That embargo compares to the incredible rise in gold after the US dollar ceased being a commodity based currency!!!!
The price of a barrel of oil [42 gallons of oil], went from $2.9 a barrel to $11.65 a barrel]. All countries who wanted to buy OPEC oil had to pay in US dollars! France realized it required its international dollars and Nixon immediately thereafter took the US dollar and made it into a fiat currency. Its value based upon other paper based currencies. All currencies on the Planet earth exist as fiat based currencies. Gold based currencies like South Africa or Libya totally destroyed. Apartheid condemned as racist soooo served the interests of the US petro-dollar monopoly!!! HaHaHaHa. Obama invaded Libya and destroyed the Libyan gold based economy. HaHaHaHa so much for liberty and justice for all. What a total joke.
Bush #2 illegally invaded Iraq and forced that country to return to the petro-dollar monopoly. Europe exists as the US bitch since WWll. US military occupies European countries unto this very day. The domesticated European poodles do not even realize that they pee while on an American leash. Daniel Erbstoesser
Immediately after cutting the petro-dollar US treasury monopoly, Nixon terminated a commodity based currency and the price of a barrel of oil rose to exceed $80 in inflated fiat paper “Monopoly” money. Overnight America became the money changer for all countries who needed OPEC oil and gas…at a price.
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